Donald Trump hails 'incredible' meeting with North Korean envoy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/19/trump-incredible-meeting-north-korean-envoy-kim-jong-un

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Donald Trump said on Saturday he had “an incredible” meeting with North Korea’s nuclear envoy, Kim Yong-chol, and the two sides had made “a lot of progress”.

Trump announces huge expansion of US missile defense system

The White House announced after Friday’s talks that Trump would hold a second summit with North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in late February but will maintain economic sanctions on Pyongyang.

“That was an incredible meeting,” Trump told reporters at the White House as he left for Dover, Delaware, to meet the bodies of four Americans killed in Syria.

“We’ve agreed to meet sometime,” Trump said, “probably the end of February. We’ve picked a country but we’ll be announcing it in the future. Kim Jong-un is looking very forward to it and so am I. We’ve made a lot of progress that has not been reported by the media.”

There has been no indication of any narrowing of differences over US demands that North Korea abandon a nuclear weapons program that threatens the US and Pyongyang’s demands for a lifting of punishing sanctions.

The two leaders’ first summit, in Singapore last June, produced a vague commitment by Kim Jong-un to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but he has yet to take what Washington sees as concrete steps in that direction.

This week, Trump announced plans for a huge expansion of US missile defense, with aim of destroying enemy missiles “anywhere, anytime, any place”.

Seven months after Trump declared that the North Korean threat had been eliminated, the new missile review stated that Pyongyang “continues to pose an extraordinary threat and the US must remain vigilant”.

On Saturday, Trump did not elaborate on the country chosen to host the second summit, but Vietnam has been considered a leading candidate.

Trump also said progress was being made toward a trade deal with North Korea’s main backer, China, but denied he was considering lifting tariffs on Chinese products.

“Things are going very well with China and with trade,” he said, adding that he had seen some “false reports” indicating that US tariffs would be lifted.

“If we make a deal certainly we would not have sanctions and if we don’t make a deal we will,” Trump said. “We’ve really had a very extraordinary number of meetings and a deal could very well happen with China. It’s going well. I would say about as well as it could possibly go.”